3.3. Events

Events make the Flash world go ’round. They are responsible for setting your scripts in motion, causing them to execute. A button can be triggered by a mouse event, text fields can react to keyboard events—even calling your own custom functions is a means of issuing a custom event.

Events come in many varieties. In addition to the obvious events like mouse and keyboard input, most ActionScript classes have their own events. For example, events are fired when watching a video, working with text, and resizing the stage. To take advantage of these events to drive your application, you need to be able to detect them.